


Winter's Warning

by thesecretsix



Series: Stark White 'verse [3]
Category: RWBY
Genre: But it stands alone, Drinking is involved, F/M, Light Angst, Night's Watch, POV Second Person, Technically part of Stark White, basically canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 03:56:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6358063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesecretsix/pseuds/thesecretsix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's not you that he's in love with, Winter. He looks at you, but he only sees her." "Do you really think I don't know that, James?" "No," sighs the general, "you always know exactly what you're doing." </p><p>An [actually hilarious and altogether tone-inappropriate] alternate title could be: Winter wearily watches a warworn, wounded wreck who won’t withhold his wavering, waffling, and winking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter's Warning

...

 

There's something intriguing about him. You don't know what it is, or why you like it. You try to reduce him to his constituent elements. He's whiskey and smarm, a total lack of class, perfection with that blade of his, and entirely too scruffy to be seen with you.

 

You're not too sure why you like him. Frankly, you're not even sure if you do like him.

 

All you can tell is that you don't hate him the way you know you ought to, and it’s starting to drive you insane.

 

...

**I.**

...

 

You remember the first time you met him.

 

You’re a senior at Atlas Academy. You’re the distinguished leader of an exceptional team. You’re assigned by the headmaster to shadow a distinguished huntsman from Vale, on some sort of mass extermination mission.

 

Before your team leaves, Headmaster Ironwood takes you aside. "He may not look like much," he tells you, "but Qrow's a reliable man." He pauses, rubbing at the shoulder where steel meets his flesh. "He's, uh... been through some harsh times." Ironwood understands the traumas of the hunter life better than most, you suspect.

 

"Winter, just remember this: there aren’t too many hunters that I trust with my students’ lives."

 

"Of course, sir." you respond. He’s asking you to respect his judgement, and you have no problems with that. You’re willing to treat any accomplished huntsman with the respect they deserve, even if they’ve got some quirks. After all, it takes no small amount of skill to survive-- no… to thrive in this profession.

 

...

 

The first thing you notice about the so-called professional you’re supposed to shadow is that he snores like a pig. You board the airship expecting to meet tall, dark, and brooding; the expert huntsman with a tortured soul. Instead, you get a pile of off-black liquor-soaked rags doing their best impression of a sawmill.

 

The headmaster was right, this man doesn't look like much. Or, frankly, anything at all. You almost want to call this whole thing off, to turn around and immediately request another mission, but you remember Ironwood’s words and the solemn look in his eyes when he asked you to trust in him.

 

You sigh and grumble, but you know you’ve already made up your mind: You’re staying. Besides, it would look terrible if you failed your first mission over such a stupid issue.

 

The man sleeps through your embarkation and the airship’s takeoff, so you feel duty bound to do something, anything, that might wake him up.

 

“Alright, team WHTT!” you declare, louder than usual. No response from the slumbering vagabond, but Haru and the twins jump with surprise. “As you know, this is our last mission before graduation. It should be a fairly typical patrol mission, similar to what we did last semester in the Atlesian plains, but on a novel terrain.”

 

Tawney interjects, “Right, we’re headed to the mountains.” “We know this, Winter. We all decided to pick this one, like, two days ago?” reminds her sister Teale.

 

“Hush, you two,” your partner rushes to your defense. “She’s just trying to get into her leadership mindspace,” he explains, “Why aren’t you used to this by now?”

 

You crank up the volume a little bit, but not because you’re pretending Haru hadn’t spoken, of course not. You feel like you’re practically yelling at this point. Every manner you were taught in your strict Schnee upbringing protests your current behavior, but if you could just wake the man up it would be an acceptable cost. “This time, we’re shadowing a successful Huntsman by the name of Qrow Branwen.”

 

At the sound of his name, the pile of rags shifts a little, resolving into a tattered cloak covering a lean body. He turns to face you and cracks open a single eye, stunningly red. “Oh,” he mumbles, “You kids are here, huh?” The eye closes, and the huntsman lapses back into sleep.

 

Goddamnit.

 

….

 

As the airship begins its descent, Qrow finally awakens properly. He’s been on so many missions, you theorize, that he’s actually completely relaxed before this one. You wonder if it’s that same experience that’s trained him to wake up in response to the familiar internal sensation associated with the decrease in altitude.

 

Running his bejewelled hand-- how many rings does one man need to wear, even your mother wears less jewelry-- through his messy black hair, he introduces himself.

 

“Alright, kids. Uhh, well I’m Qrow. I’m a huntsman, been one for a while.” He stifles a yawn. “What else do you need to know, hmm? Well, I’m a close-to-mid range melee specialist. I guess that’s really about it, right?”

 

He’s altogether underwhelming, but you chalk that up to a bad first impression. Surely he’s spectacular in the field. You know he’s experienced, you know the headmaster wouldn’t send you with some incompetent drunk, so you try to convince yourself that smell wafting Qrow in waves isn’t cheap whiskey and that the flash of leather you catch a glimpse of doesn’t imply a (poorly) hidden flask.

 

You’re pushed out of your mental gymnastics when the cabin lights turn red. You look to your senior for instruction, but he only makes a vague _after you_ gesture. It’s alright, you’ve done this at least a dozen times at this point, you don’t need his guidance.

 

A quick glance over your team tells you that they’re all ready for the drop, so you wordlessly slide open the cabin door and leap. Your landing strategy, as always, is flawless. You don’t bother to slow your fall in the least. A simple glyph-- one of the first you’d mastered, half a decade ago-- at the moment your foot touches the ground trades your downwards momentum for transverse momentum and a second bleeds the excess into the surrounding air as you skid smoothly to a stop.

 

You’ve beaten your team down (their strategies rely on decreasing the velocity of their respective descents) but you’re surprised to find that Qrow’s already landed. He taps his foot impatiently as the two of you wait for the others to catch up, as if he’s been waiting for hours rather than mere seconds.

 

You ask him what the plan is. After all, he’s the senior hunter and presumably you’re here to shadow him. “Plan?” He chuckles. “Why would I have a plan? This is your show, kid.”

 

Luckily, you take your responsibilities as the leader of your team seriously, and you’ve made sure to familiarize yourself with the area you’re patrolling. As you share your own on-the-spot plans with your team, you look to the dusty old mentor for signs of approval or disapproval. His total lack of response makes you wonder if he’s even paying attention.

 

...

 

The first day of your mission continues much in this fashion.

 

Not to say that it isn’t successful. It is, really. You cover the ground you expect to cover, and kill all of the Grimm you encounter. You fulfill the two basic requirements of a patrol mission.

 

No thanks to Qrow, of course; he follows along at his own sedate pace. When your team engages the enemy, he sits on the sidelines with his feet propped up. On more than one occasion, he calls out “helpful” pointers: things like “Don’t forget to reload” when Haru’s SMG clicks dry or “Pointy end towards angry monster” when Teale whiffs a swing of her sword and comes dangerously close to nicking her sister.

 

You think you wouldn’t mind as much if he could phrase that so-called advice in a tone even half as adversarial, but it’s like the man has some hourly quota of snark to meet.

 

It surprises you, as you set up your camp for the night, when Qrow offers to take the first watch. “You kids pulled your weight pretty well out there,” he justifies. “Go ahead and rest up, I’ll wake you.” It’s surprisingly generous and incredibly atypical for any mentor to offer such a thing, and you wonder if somewhere deep beneath his more evident layers lies a decent man. Hell, you can almost rationalize his lazy and abrasive behavior as some sort of avant garde teaching style.

 

It’s on this positive note that sleep finds you, welcomed swiftly by your aching bones.

 

...

 

A hand on your shoulder awakens you.

 

You open your eyes to a dark silhouette blotting out the gentle light of the shattered moon. It takes you a few seconds to resolve the shape you see with your temporary mentor, though the characteristic stench certainly helps. It’s a scent you’ve started to associate with him, but your sleepy brain can’t place it immediately.

 

“It’s zero four hundred hours, you have the last watch.” There’s something odd about the way he says it. As you blink away the heaviness of slumber, it clicks. “You’ve been drinking.” It’s an accusation, not a question.

 

He answers you with one, though. “I’ve gotta sleep, don’t I?”

 

The headmaster’s words echo about in your mind: “He’s been through some harsh times,” Ironwood had said. You hadn’t thought about the implications of that, you’d let your annoyance push that sentence out of your mind.

 

But now you sit alone in the night, watching over your team and this strange huntsman, and the idea just won’t leave you.

 

_What happened to you, Qrow? What made you like this?_

 

You’ve met other professional huntsmen and huntresses before, but none so obviously broken. A particularly memorable mission had paired team WHTT with a Mistrali woman who had described to you in great detail the way she’d lost her left arm (you wish you could forget her graphic descriptions of how the Griffon had pulled it off her, and the sounds she made to imitate the way her shoulder was removed from its socket). She told you this gruesome story with a steely face, but then with a smile told you how the experience shaped her into the strong, independent huntress she had become.

 

It reminds you of a line your father likes to bandy about, “through suffering, strength.” It’s a simple enough concept often expressed in more poetic terms. The strongest steel is forged in the hottest flames. The purest dust is found only in the deepest mines. The sweetest fruit grow in the harshest climates.

 

When you look at Qrow, though, you’re reminded of another saying, one that runs to the contrary. “Suffering begets only suffering.”

 

…

 

The rest of the week passes in much the same way, with only one notable exception. As your team proves themselves to meet some baseline level of competence, Qrow’s commentary veers abruptly from sarcastic illumination of your mistakes to something less appropriate.

 

It begins with no warning, as his criticism of Haru’s poor aim turns into what might be the true story of how his brother-in-law “almost got his dick shot off, I’m not even kidding,” followed by a crass cackle.

 

Poorly veiled sexual references, mildly perverse laughter, and truly terrible puns make up almost seventy percent of what makes it past his lips from that point onwards (the remaining fraction, you’re sure, can be mostly accounted for by liquor heading the other way through).

 

And the winking, gods damn the winking. You’re well aware that all of the members of team WHTT are attractive individuals-- it’s a well known quirk of hunter genetics that those in the highest percentiles in Aura, intelligence, and skill tend also to be among the most beautiful of the species-- but you’re quite sure you can find some way to acknowledge that fact without all of Qrow’s winking, smirking, and flirting.

 

“I might even be flattered,” Tawney confides, “if he wasn’t a drunk-ass thirty year old.” “At least you know it’s not some sexist thing,” rationalizes Haru. “l mean, if that was him trying to slap my ass…”

 

“I sincerely hope he has better aim with his weapon,” you say haughtily as you attempt to dismiss the whole Qrow situation. Maybe if you try very hard to ignore him, he’ll behave. You know that you’re doomed to failure when Haru snickers.

 

“Phrasing.”

 

You don’t miss when you smack the back of his head. You can’t do anything to stop Qrow, but you can put an end to this behavior when it comes from within your own team.

 

…

 

And then it all goes to hell.

 

It’s the last day of your patrol, and your only objective is to make it back to the wall in time to catch the airship home. Maybe your recent successes make you sloppy, maybe there’s a bit of intel you’re lacking, but you choose the wrong path.

 

You very nearly pay for that with your life. The route you’ve plotted takes you through an until now undiscovered nest of massive Grimm and boy are they unhappy to see you. Suddenly, what was meant to be a casual shortcut through a well-charted mountain pass devolves into a mad dash across a Grimm-infested wasteland.

 

You can see the wall from here, it’s coming into sight as you round the last bend in the pass. Safety is only another kilometer away, but a quick glance over your shoulder tells you that your team is flagging. The twins just can’t maintain this speed, not for this long. Unless you do something, and soon, they’ll be overrun well before they make it within the range of the big guns at the wall.

 

It takes the average huntress three minutes to run a kilometer. You estimate Teale and Tawney might last another minute at most at their current pace.

 

You don’t really have any good options here. Actually, you’re not sure you really even have options at all.

 

Sometimes, a leader can’t allow themselves the luxury of options. The key, you tell yourself, is grace under pressure.

 

You react immediately when the harsh shriek and subtle whistle of a Nevermore beginning its dive reach your ears. Throwing up two momentum-translation glyphs, you smoothly turn your forward sprint into a graceful arc through the air, upside-down and in the opposite direction without losing an iota of speed. Your calculating eyes take in the opposition, then your force-amplification glyph accelerates you in the optimal trajectory. Your saber pierces cleanly through the Nevermore’s eye, killing it instantly. As you and its rapidly disintegrating body begin to fall, you scope out your next target: a Deathstalker in mid-charge, only a few meters behind Teale.

 

It’s a tougher foe, but you know a particular trick to dealing with them. Another force-amplifying glyph propels you towards it, and as you soar, you separate your weapon. Traditionally your secondary blade, a main-gauche, is used to parry the sword of an opposing duelist. You’ve learned a second way to use yours.

 

You come in fast, leveraging your large momentum to slice through the weak point in the Deathstalker’s tail. It’s stinger now out of the picture, the oversized scorpion has no way to defend it’s back, giving you the time you need to slide your main-gauche under one of it’s dorsal armor segments. A sly twist of your dagger lets the uptick at its tip catch on the underside of the armor plate, then you pry the whole chitinous block right off exposing the creature’s vitals to the tender mercies of your saber. You roll off the back of the Deathstalker, casually eviscerating a Beowolf as you do so, and begin to sprint towards your team and the safety of the wall once more.

 

Your team’s making good time, they’ve kept running throughout your brief combat interlude, and you allow yourself to breath a sigh of relief.

 

Unfortunately, you’re just a moment too early.

 

“Winter!” cries Haru, who’s taken a second to look back at you. “Behind you!”

 

With the slightest hope of escaping whatever doom you’ve condemned yourself to, you turn around to find yourself face-to-face with an angry Griffon. It strikes first with its beak, knocking you to the ground. Even though it’s failed to penetrate your aura, the hit spells your demise; now that you’re off your feet, the rest of the Grimm horde has the opportunity to catch up with you.

 

You can fight one or two, even three creatures of this size… but the twenty or so that are already staring you down? That’s out of the realm of feasibility.

 

“Keep running,” you tell your team. At least this way, even if you fall, they’ll have made it. That’s what a leader’s job is, right? To keep everyone alive?

 

You don’t close your eyes as the griffon charges at you once more. You raise your saber and prepare to meet your death like a proper huntress; you’ll go down fighting. The monster shrieks at you, opening its bony beak to reveal rows of jagged fangs. Tunnel vision sets in, the griffon is all you can focus on. Black, white, and red fill your vision, and you wait for the pain to start.

 

Which is why you’re taken entirely by surprise when you hear only the clang of bone on metal. “Don’t run off to make heroic sacrifices like that,” says your unexpected savior. You’d forgotten about this man Qrow, this senior huntsman you’re ostensibly here to shadow. You’d forgotten that he’s supposed to be someone capable, that he’s got the trust of your headmaster himself, that he wasn’t dead weight to be carried by your team.

 

He looks you over critically, then with his right hand withdraws that leather flask from his back pocket. Popping the top of with his teeth, he takes a long swig. “Want some?” he extends the flask to you. You’re too shocked to answer with words, you just shake your head. “Eh, more for me.” He takes another swig.

 

“I’ve got a job to do,” he announces, as if he’s just now noticing the enormous lion-bird hybrid struggling against the sword in his left hand.

 

He leans into the blade, shoving the Griffon back a step, then withdraws and spins quickly to remove both of the creature’s front legs. As the beast comes crashing down, he sidesteps it’s body and decapitates it.

 

The sheer physical strength any of those tasks must have taken… it’s beyond you. And he’s accomplished them casually, one-handed, without spilling a drop from that kitschy leather flask of his.

 

There’s an eerie moment of silence after the decimation of the Griffon, as the rest of the Grimm horde considers their new target. “Hmm,” says Qrow, “I’ll probably need both hands for this.” He takes one last drink, then hands you the flask. The scent of whisky fills your nostrils, mixing with the adrenaline to make you just a little lightheaded.

 

One drink can’t hurt, you decide, considering the week you’ve had. The week you’re _still having_. Okay, maybe one drink could hurt quite a bit. Maybe one drink’s the difference between life and death, when you’re surrounded by this many Grimm.

 

Although it doesn’t seem to be hurting Qrow.

 

With both hands now free for combat use, the huntsman initiates a mechashift. A clanking of gears heralds the revelation of the final form of his weapon: a wicked looking multi-segmented scythe.

 

“Let’s go wild.”

 

As you watch the ensuing carnage, you decide to have that sip after all.

 

…

 

You’re left with a begrudging respect for the man after he makes sure you and your team don't die. You’re left with a lot of questions for him, you wish that you could know a little more.

 

Maybe it’s fear-- perhaps you’re afraid of turning out that way yourself. Maybe it’s something more.

 

You have a life to live, though, so you push the mysterious huntsman to the back of your mind.

 

…

**II.**

...

 

You don't encounter him again for quite some time.

 

The years are good to you. You graduate Atlas Academy at the top of your class. Your skills and your grades qualify you to be fast-tracked into the officer training program. You never intended to be a soldier, not explicitly, but you revel in it now. It's something you've accomplished on your own merit, without leaning on your father's name and money.

 

In the military, nobody cares about that baggage. You’re defined entirely by what you can do, what you have done, and what you plan to do. That part’s basically been your dream since you were a teenager, when you realized how people looked at you differently because of your name. You’ve always wanted to cast that aside.

 

That’s not to say that the military is an easy lifestyle, far from it. You put in the time and the effort, though, and you live with not being able to visit your sister all too often. You try to make up for it by phoning home more often, but you find that you can’t always answer her questions in a satisfactory manner. “What sort of stuff do they have you working on?” she’ll ask you. Since you started your work-study with the Specialists, you’re not allowed to say. “Classified,” you’re forced to reply with a heavily suppressed wince.

 

She greets you a little too formally, sometimes, and slowly she starts to speak to you as if you’re a stranger. How long has it been since you’ve had a break, you wonder. You really miss her, and the close relationship the two of you used to share. Back before you decided to train as a huntress, back before the White Fang decided to play havoc on your family life, back before you decided to distance yourself from your father, back before your mother-

 

This isn’t something you want to think about, so you throw yourself back into your work. If you do well enough here and now, there’ll be a Specialist position with your name on it come graduation.

 

...

 

You complete your training with flying colors, as expected. You’ve made sure to set yourself up only for success, but you find yourself wishing that you’d stopped to smell the roses somewhere along the way.

 

Your sister doesn’t make it to your graduation. As you give your second Valedictorian’s speech (guiltily congratulating your peers for not being as perfect as you, reminding them that they couldn’t beat you in combat school and that they still couldn’t beat you in the military academy) you can’t help but wonder if you’d be happier sitting with the masses. You’d trade your honors in a heartbeat, you realize, if only it meant that you could share this moment with Weiss.

 

...

 

The honors and accolades continue, as General Ironwood-- you address him by his rank now, you’re his subordinate in the military and no longer his student-- invites you to the annual officers-hunters banquet. “Dress well,” he chuckles. At first you wonder if that was the serious man’s arcane attempt at a joke, but you soon learn that this is the single event that officers don’t wear their dress uniforms to.

 

(There’s some story behind it, tradition blended finely with myth and official decorum, but it can be summarized quite simply. The banquet exists to celebrate all those who wage war on the creatures of Grimm, the soldiers and hunters who form the last lines of defense for all the peoples of Remnant. Being themselves among the guests of honor, officers are excused from their uniforms. Some say this is actually a strict rule, that officers are in fact forbidden from wearing their uniforms on this night. The rationale here being that uniforms only highlight the distinction between those who serve the people and those who serve the state when both are to be celebrated equally. Still others suggest that this requirement fell into place following the colorful revolution, which put in place a bias against uniformity. Needless to say, all attendees dress to impress, brandishing their individual styles with pride.)

 

(White and blue are your colors. Well, it’s more accurate to say that white is the Schnee’s color, the color of Atlas-- the blank canvas over which you layer your own steel blue.)

 

(You’re surprised to find that you don’t own any dresses. The last time you wore something other than your dress uniform… it must have been before you entered the Academy. You were so young then, and you wore the dresses your mother had picked out for you. Frilly, white, laced monstrosities that you wouldn’t be caught dead in today. You find yourself something nice, spending just a bit of your signing bonus, treating yourself for the first time in years. _It’s as much an investment as it is a reward_ , you tell yourself, as you slip into the curve-hugging dress.)

 

(You look fantastic.)

 

The event kicks off with a half dozen speeches. You pay little mind to most of them, they all seem to cover the same few talking points, but the last two catch your attention. The first of these is important to you for obvious reasons: it’s delivered by your long-time mentor and role model, General Ironwood. Unlike the other speakers, he talks about the here and now, about the struggles the Atlesian military and the global hunter organization have undertook and overcome in the last year, and about the goals for the coming year. He thanks the men and women under his command, addressing a few by name and congratulating them on their recent achievements.

 

“And finally, I want to welcome a new huntress to the ranks of the Specialists. As most of you know, the Specialists are our best and brightest, those who excel at both the talents of the hunter and the military arts. It’s difficult for even experienced hunters to qualify for such a position-- even I spent many years struggling to pass the qualifying exams (of course, I did eventually, and you see where that’s led me)-- which of course makes her accomplishments all the more impressive. So let’s all congratulate our newest Specialist, Winter Schnee!”

 

As the banquet attendees clap, you flush. Maybe if he’d given some warning, you could have been prepared for this. As it stands, you’d prefer for the earth to swallow you whole.

 

Eventually, the general’s speech comes to an end. He introduces the final speaker of the evening, the headmaster of Vale’s hunter academy, a mysterious man in a green-accented tuxedo who seems to have misplaced his first name. He’s soft spoken, a stark contrast against the boldness of the man who preceded him, and you find it difficult to focus on his words. You feel as if they’re meaningful, but struggle to recall even the point of his previous sentence when he starts on the next.

 

You’re too distracted by the man in his entourage. It takes you a surprisingly long time to place him-- you know him from somewhere, he’s got that look about him, but who is he? It’s not until Ozpin finishes his speech and the room rises in standing ovation that you solve the puzzle. As he stands to applaud, the casual slouch (somehow elegant, as if he’d made it a point to elevate his complete inability to give a damn to an art form) gives it away.

 

You understand how you didn’t recognize Qrow, dressed as he is in a dark grey suit with red and black accents. It’s a far cry from the rags you remember him wearing. And what’s that, is he actually engaged with the event? Is he… smiling?

 

That seems like a stretch, maybe you’re imagining it.  

 

You make it a point, once the banquet is in full swing, to greet the man personally. You have an excuse, hell, with Ironwood hanging around the Beacon faction you have several excuses to approach them.

 

“Ah, Winter! Excellent timing.” Ironwood has clearly had a drink or two at this point, judging from the healthy glow to his cheeks. “I wanted to introduce you to a few people.” He rattles off a list of names and the appropriate descriptions, almost too quickly for you to connect them to faces. For the most part, it seems that they’re professors at Beacon. There are, of course, exceptions. Qrow, for example.

 

The general doesn’t have a chance to introduce the formerly-scruffy huntsman, though, as the man in question speaks up for himself. “Hello again, Winter.” He smiles at you, a charming smoulder that brings the blood rushing to your face. You move to hide it behind your wine glass, but you suspect you’re not fooling anyone.

 

“I didn’t realize you were familiar with one another,” comments the portly gentleman, one of the professors if you recall correctly.

 

Qrow responds with a little wink in your direction-- a quick flutter of the eyelid and you’re left wondering if it happened at all. “We go back a few years, actually,” he says to the assorted professors. (The severe looking blonde woman frowns at whatever insinuations she detects in his statement) He makes as if to continue, but is interrupted by the Ironwood. “Oh, I remember, you were assigned to shadow him a few years back.” What an blase way to remember the time time you’ve come closest to death.

 

The conversation moves on from there, and as Ironwood blathers on about how he actually attended Beacon on a team with two of these professors, you’re left with some space to think again.

 

You’re intrigued by Qrow. He’s really polished himself up quite nicely. He’s an attractive man (something that wasn’t obvious the last time you met him), and a powerful huntsman wielding a unique weapon (something that _was_ obvious the last time you met him). Qrow can’t be too much older than you, if he’s still an active duty huntsman. And maybe you’re reading too much into the situation, but it seems that he’s interested in you.

 

You’ve never had much time for romance before, but perhaps this is something to look into.

 

With a smile and a nod to Qrow, you excuse yourself from the conversation. Ironwood’s trip down nostalgia lane doesn’t do much for you. Meandering about the banquet hall, you find yourself at the event’s open bar. You look up and down the rows of top shelf liquors, wondering how anyone makes a decision here in the absence of a menu. People seem to be ordering from memory, already having formed their own preferences. It’s not like you have a lot of experience in this field, though; you can count on one hand the number drinks you’ve had in your twenty-five years. (A sip of rotgut from Qrow’s flask, four years ago: bracing, necessary, but objectively disgusting. Two fingers of Atlesian whiskey with the General when you graduated with top honors for the second time: harsh, but you choked it down nonetheless, never let them see you flinch. A glass of white wine with your mother on her birthday: acceptable, but far too intertwined with the things you’d rather not remember.)

 

Excelling, as you’ve always done, never left a lot of time for you to enjoy these kinds of things.

 

“Might I suggest something?” says Qrow, somehow suddenly behind you. You start; you’d fallen victim to rumination and his presence just over your shoulder brings you crashing back to reality. He’s close to you now, as close as he could be without touching you. You feel his breath in your ear, your senses are drowned out his characteristic scent-- a fine whiskey, woody and peaty, a sharp edge; tones of machine oil, no doubt from his work, tinkering with that mechanical monstrosity of a scythe; deeper still and you smell roses, but he’s not a rosey man, not on the surface at least, and-

 

“I thought you were a white wine, at first, but there’s something about you-- just a feeling that tells me that would be wrong. Naive.”

 

The banquet hall is packed, but as he speaks softly into your ear the crowd fades to a dull murmur in the background. It’s as if you’re alone with him. If you could relax, if you could lean back just a centimeter, you’d practically be in his arms. You wonder if he can feel your heartbeat accelerate; _allegro, vivace, presto._

 

“Maybe it’s too obvious, or maybe I’m reading a little too much into it. There’s… something deeper to you. Elegance and poise, yes, but… heart: a hidden melancholy, a resolute passion, a tempered thirst for victory.”

 

And somehow he’s even closer than before, practically whispering his poetry into your ear. There’s a tension between the two of you, and it’s building, building up past the point that you can take. You’re in public, you have to remind yourself. It wouldn’t do to be humiliated in front of your colleagues and subordinates.

 

You whirl around, one-eighty degrees, putting yourself face-to-face with the man. You immediately regret this action as you realize that you and Qrow are almost exactly the same height. Millimeters separate the tips of your noses, and blood rushes to your cheeks as you realize that the slightest nudge from behind would result in you kissing.

 

“Well, Qrow,” you say, tamping down your nervousness, forging ahead. “You seem to be the expert. Tell me, what is it that I want?”

 

“I’ll need some more information before I can deliver such an important decision.”

 

You can almost feel the shape of his words travel through the air to your lips. “Then ask me.”

 

“What’s your favorite color? It’s not white, surely, but maybe blue?”

 

“Red,” you confess, drowning in his eyes. Inhaling his scent again, you clarify. “Like a rose in full bloom.”

 

He chuckles, “There are white roses too, and blue ones. Surely those would be more to your liking?”  

 

“Maybe I just like the classics.”

 

“Fair enough. Alright, bitter or sweet?”

 

That’s a hard one. You turn the question over in your mind, before deciding that this isn’t really a question about taste after all. “Suffering only begets suffering,” you tell him. “I’ll have something sweet instead.”

 

His eyes widen minutely-- you’d never have noticed if you hadn’t been staring already. “Last one, pick a red fruit: apples, raspberries, or-”

 

You cut him off. “Strawberries.”

 

Qrow takes a step back-- something’s wrong, you’ve startled him, he’s not interested in the game anymore. He plays it off smoothly, though, turning his reaction into a smirk and a nod. He addresses the bartender, who you realize has been avidly watching your little game. “A strawberry sunrise for the lady, please, and hold the ice.”

 

The bartender puts on a bit of a show as he mixes up the drink, but you can’t be bothered to pay him any attention. Something’s wrong, you know it, you can tell you’ve done it, you’ve messed up and now Qrow’s guard is up. But what did you do? Was it… the strawberries? You don’t understand.

 

He doesn’t give you the chance to understand, though, as he flashes a dazzling smile at you that somehow doesn’t reach his eyes. “It’s been fantastic running into you again, Winter. We’ll have to do this again sometime.” That’s a relief, then, it’s probably not explicitly something you’ve done.

 

You wonder if the drink reminds him of someone.  

 

Someone who meant something to him.

 

Someone who hurt him.

 

“Yeah,” you say lamely, caught up in your speculation. You make up for it with the most disarming smile you can manage, something a little flirtatious, a little confident, a little coy, a little commanding. All the things you are, all the things you feel, all crammed into one compact expression. ( _Any man_ , you suspect, _would become putty upon the very sight._ ) Qrow looks at you and misses it; you’re not sure he’s seeing your face. He abruptly turns to leave, disappearing immediately into the crowd.

 

You collect the drink from the bartender and take an experimental sip. _Wow_. You didn’t know alcohol could be this damned tasty. It’s a shame though, that this beautiful drink is soured by the knowledge that it’s somehow party to the conclusion of your game with the mysterious, oh-so-attractive huntsman.

 

…

 

It’s a damned shame, you reflect, as you head back to the barracks that night. His ass looked spectacular in those perfectly fitted pants.

 

...

 

**Author's Note:**

> This has been parts 1 and 2 of Winter's Warning. There are 4 parts in total. Part 3 is mostly written, but I'll post it only once I'm done with part 4 as well. 
> 
> It's a bit different from my usual team STRQ game, but this fic's been a little while in the works. It was meant to be a lot shorter than it is, but something about the voice I decided on for Winter just lets me write and write and write. 
> 
> It's also a bit of an experiment with a particular style of "stream of conciousness" that's a bit different from the usual. I've played with this style a little bit-- it's close to Yusei's massive infodump diversions in I Opened My Eyes, but here I try to imply a lot of character and backstory through offhand references that we dance around. I'm not sure it works, to be honest, but perfect is the enemy of done...
> 
> ...
> 
> Nothing I write would be complete without at least a few additional notes:
> 
> ....
> 
> Ages: 
> 
> In the Stark White universe, Qrow entered Beacon at 15 (like Ruby). He graduated in the standard four years, at 19. Taiyang and Raven had Yang roughly two years later, and then Summer has Ruby two years after that, making Qrow 23ish when Ruby is born. The story ends during RWBY’s first year at Beacon, 15 years after Ruby is born, making Qrow 38 at the end. 
> 
> So… that means my target minimum age for Winter at that point is 28. It needs to be reasonably low, because she’s Weiss’s sister. 28 feels like it’s stretching that, since that makes her 11 years older than Weiss, and putting the same age difference between Winter and Ruby as there is between Winter and Summer. 
> 
> Weird, right? But that sort age difference between Winter and Weiss makes a lot of sense considering that when she shows up in Brawl in the Family, Winter seems to be a high-ranked official in the Atlesian military who also has huntress training. If, as it does in this story, that requires one to attend a hunter academy for four years, and then a military academy for a further three, that leaves Winter with only three years to climb up the ranks before Brawl. 
> 
> That almost feels like it’s pushing it, because wow, Winter’s got a full battle droid escort when she shows up. I feel like they wouldn’t do that for just anyone, you know? (Sure, she’s a Schnee, but she talks a big game to Weiss about forging one’s own path) This sort of suggests to me that she’s either older than 28 at that point, or that she’s a special kind of wildly successful. 
> 
> So yeah, Winter is at a minimum eleven years older than Weiss. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it, because it’s the only way I can explain the canon timeline and her apparent rank in a rational way. And if that happens to make the Knight’s Watch age gap acceptable, well, that’s just a happy coincidence. 
> 
> ...
> 
> Why do you do always write Qrow as the bad guy?
> 
> I don’t. These are just people; there’s no good or evil at all here. Just flawed human beings who don’t always make the best decisions. Qrow’s pretty good at making bad life choices these days. He’s been through some shit.
> 
> In the Stark White ‘verse, some things might be a little rougher for him than canon. I showed how bad things got when Raven disappeared. Now, Qrow’s learned exactly what’s happened to Raven and he also knows that Raven killed Summer. As far as he knows, he had the chance to prevent Summer’s death, but he failed. (Sure, he warned her, but he never told her the full truth. Summer probably would still have got to see Raven, but Qrow has no way of knowing that for sure. Maybe I'll explore that one day?) That kind of thing can wreck a man.
> 
> We'll get some more sympathy for Qrow, I think, in part 3 of this.


End file.
